Pinpoint
Pinpoint
The story, technology, and vision behind an independent strategic board game
Pinpoint is an independent, cross-platform strategic board game where two to four players compete for dominance on a 10×10 grid by placing coloured pins to form high-scoring patterns. The game is available as a free-to-play web application at pinpoint.click and as a native Android application on the Google Play Store.
At its core, Pinpoint blends the spatial reasoning of classic alignment games with a unique multi-colour pattern system and a game-changing mechanic — the 6-Line Reversal — that keeps every match unpredictable right up to the final move. Rather than simply placing pieces to block a single opponent, players must manage four colours simultaneously, track diagonal opportunities, contest section centres for bonus points, and anticipate how a reversal could flip the entire board state in moments.
The central idea: A strategic game that is easy to learn in minutes, yet deep enough to reward hundreds of hours of practice. Pinpoint aims to give players of all skill levels a reason to keep coming back.
The game supports single-player practice against four AI difficulty levels, local pass-and-play multiplayer on a single device, and real-time online multiplayer across web and Android platforms simultaneously. This cross-platform architecture — where a web browser user can play against an Android app user in the same live game room — is one of the technical achievements we are most proud of.
Pinpoint is a digital adaptation of the classic physical board game Pin Point, originally published in 1993 by Oliver Games of England. The original is a fast, challenging strategy game for 2–4 players played on a 10×10 grid with pill-shaped coloured playing pieces, focused on pattern recognition, spatial awareness, and tactical skill.
The Oliver Games original is now out of print and increasingly rare, occasionally surfacing on secondary markets. A review of the physical game can be found on BoardGameGeek, where collectors and board game enthusiasts have discussed its unique mechanics and lasting appeal.
Our digital version stays faithful to the core rules of the original while adding features that only a digital platform can offer: four AI difficulty levels, real-time cross-platform online multiplayer, a live global leaderboard, and Discord Activity integration — all built on the same 10×10 grid and pattern-scoring foundation that made the original so compelling.
If you grew up playing the physical Oliver Games version and are looking for a way to enjoy it again — or want to introduce it to friends — Pinpoint at pinpoint.click and on the Google Play Store is the best way to play today.
Pinpoint began as a personal project: a simple experiment to see if a pin-based alignment game could offer more strategic depth than traditional five-in-a-row games like Gomoku. The core idea was to replace the sudden-death "five in a row wins" rule with an accumulative scoring system, where every move contributes points and the board evolves through multiple rounds of pattern building rather than ending on a single decisive placement.
Early prototypes were played on paper grids. After testing dozens of rule variations, several mechanics proved consistently engaging: the four-colour pin system (which prevents any single player from dominating a colour), the 2×2 square and plus-sign cross bonus patterns, and — critically — the 6-Line Reversal. The reversal mechanic, which turns a six-pin line black and disrupts surrounding patterns, introduced a dramatic swing element that made even losing positions recoverable with careful planning.
Building a game that works identically across web browsers and Android devices is a significant engineering challenge. The same move that scores points on an Android phone must score exactly the same points in a web browser — and both must reflect real-time state changes when playing online multiplayer. Pinpoint achieves this through a shared core built with Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP).
The most important architectural decision in Pinpoint's development was extracting all game rules into a platform-agnostic Kotlin module. This "shared module" handles every aspect of game state: which player's turn it is, what pins are in each hand, where pins have been placed on the board, and — crucially — the pattern detection algorithms that score lines, squares, and crosses in all directions.
When a player places a pin, the shared engine evaluates all eight directions (horizontal, vertical, and both diagonals) in real time, identifies the longest line in each direction, checks for 2×2 squares and plus-sign crosses, and applies the 6-Line Reversal mechanic if a six-or-more-pin line is detected. This computation happens in milliseconds and produces identical results regardless of whether the player is on a phone or a browser.
Online multiplayer is implemented through Firebase Realtime Database. When a player creates a room, a structured game document is written to Firebase containing the room configuration, player slots, pin hands, board state, and the current turn sequence. All clients — web or Android — listen to this document in real time. When any player makes a move, the host client validates it against the shared game engine and broadcasts the updated state back to Firebase, which all clients receive instantly.
This architecture means that a player using a web browser on a laptop can play in the same room as a friend using the Android app on their phone, with both clients receiving identical game states throughout the match.
Every design decision in Pinpoint has been made with one question in mind: does this make the game more interesting without making it more complicated? The rules are simple enough to explain in two minutes, but the strategic depth emerges from the interaction between those simple rules.
Every pin placement scores at least one point and potentially contributes to multiple patterns. There are no "wasted" moves — even a pin placed on an isolated cell might form part of a future cross or prevent an opponent's square.
Pin hands are randomly dealt, but each hand of four always contains all four colours. This ensures randomness never leaves a player stranded — strategy always matters more than luck of the draw.
The 6-Line Reversal exists specifically to prevent runaway leaders. A trailing player who sets up a reversal chain can dramatically close a score gap in a single turn, keeping games competitive to the end.
Pinpoint supports 2 to 4 players, and the strategic dynamics change meaningfully with each additional player. A 4-player game requires defensive awareness across three opponents simultaneously.
Rather than simple random moves, our AI opponents model genuine strategy. The Expert bot uses a minimax search tree with alpha-beta pruning to look ahead multiple turns, simulate opponent responses, and identify the highest-expected-value move.
The game is free to play, requires no account or login for local games, and runs in any modern web browser without installation. We believe great games should be as accessible as possible.
Traditional alignment games like Gomoku use two colours — one per player — which means patterns are always owned exclusively by one player. Pinpoint's four-colour system means the same pin colour is shared across all players. A red pin you place in a key position might also extend an opponent's red line. This shared colour mechanic creates an additional strategic layer: sometimes you must choose between extending your own pattern and blocking a shared colour from benefitting an opponent more than you.
The Joker pin — which can represent any colour when played — was introduced to give players a critical decision tool. Jokers are powerful precisely because they are scarce. Using a Joker to score two points early is almost always the wrong decision; saving it to complete a section-centre cross worth ten points is a hallmark of experienced play.
Pinpoint is an independent project, built and maintained by a small development team. Our mission is straightforward: to create a genuinely great strategy game that is free to play, accessible across devices, and continually improved based on player feedback.
We are committed to:
Follow our development journey and stay informed about new features, balance updates, and behind-the-scenes insights on our official developer blog. We regularly publish deep dives into game design decisions, technical architecture discussions, and player spotlights on our Blogspot developer blog. Whether you're curious about how the Expert AI was trained, the reasoning behind recent rule tweaks, or stories from our players, you'll find it there.
Yes. Pinpoint is completely free to play on web browsers and the Android app. Optional rewarded video ads provide extra undo credits within a match, but no feature of the core game requires payment.
No account or login is required for local games or AI practice matches. Online multiplayer uses an anonymous session token generated automatically when you first visit the site, so you can join rooms and appear on leaderboards without registering.
Yes. This is one of Pinpoint's core features. An Android user can create a room or join a room that was created from a web browser, and vice versa. Both clients share the same real-time game state via Firebase.
Currently, Pinpoint is available on web (all platforms, including iOS Safari) and as a native Android application. A dedicated iOS app is not yet available, but the web version is fully playable on iPhone and iPad browsers.
Leaderboard rankings are based on scores from completed online multiplayer games. Local games and AI practice matches do not count toward leaderboard rankings. Scores are tracked across Daily, Weekly, and All-Time timeframes. See the Leaderboard page for live rankings.
When any player places a pin that creates a connected line of six or more pins of the same colour (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally), all those pins in the line are turned black and removed from scoring for that colour. This is called a "blackout" or reversal. The move scores 10 points for the player who triggered it, but all those board positions are now neutralised. See the 6-Line Reversal Tactics guide for advanced usage.
Please visit our Contact page and send an email to our support address. Bug reports are always welcomed — please include your platform (web/Android), browser version if applicable, and a description of what happened.